


The Fourth Wall

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-19
Updated: 2007-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:25:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1631435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of all the places to battle the Lone Power for Carl's sake, Tom Swale picked the stage.  Of all the ways to conduct the battle, they wound up with blank verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fourth Wall

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure this is proper Young Wizards territory. In fact, I'm more or less sure it's not: a couple of steps further out into fairyland, with a dash of  <i>The King in Yellow</i>(!) and a whiff of <i>American Gods</i> and maybe a bit of a spell itself.   
> At first I had the beginnings of a hideously depressing tale in which they were separated and Carl was running through a time-loop battling the Lone Power in the body of a friend dying of AIDS in the early eighties, and. it was just no good going from there.   
> Then this one wrote itself; it was where the characters wanted to go. The version of Tom Swale in my head assures me that the dangerous thing about playwriting is that you will end up slightly altering people and their circumstances, and the actors, such as they are, will alter them further, and the best thing to do is ride with it and trust the Powers.   
> So this may be a slightly alternate pair of wizards, in a slightly alternate universe. I ask you all to bear with them. They seem to know what they're doing, even if I'm not all so sure about it.   
> By the way, in case anyone wants more background on this story, <a href="http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/30/anunwilling.html">An Unwilling Heart</a> from last year's Yuletide is more or less indelibly canon in my head, and this takes place around two years later. The playwriting that forms the setting for this one is a nod to Tom's circumstances in that one. Dear recipient, since you requested non-slash, I feel guilty recommending it; but it's not a sex story at all, and is mostly very wonderful plot with a lot of historical detail and some flirting in. That story, by the way, is why of all the requests possible with my offered fandoms, this was the hardest one anyone could have given me: it took me up until the deadline to talk myself out of being intimidated by the sheer perfection. Even so, I've enjoyed the process and most of the crazy it's brought -- and the effort shook me out of a long block.
> 
> Written for youngest_one

 

 

 

 

Lately something wasn't clicking; rather, was abnormally not-clicking. When you were a wizard, usually you could make things click. But career was lately a big blank spot for Carl Romeo. He was getting by in the meantime by gathering signatures for a local politician he wouldn't trust further than a truck could throw an aircraft carrier, though at the end of the day he whispered to his pages of names, in the Speech, that after the nice man counted them they could find a very nice restful life hiding behind a filing cabinet and could they please tell their friends?

But he still came home grinding his teeth and wanting to disappear.

"I'm too tired of this -- this living paycheck to paycheck, not knowing what I'll do next year or the year after that."

"Mmm," Tom said, and looked up from his typewriter. "Hmm. Remember, a couple years ago, someone offered you a gig selling radio airtime? You should try that."

"They won't give a fig for me now, and if they do -- they'll remember me as the guy who takes two years to respond to a phone call."

"Even if the original offer's moved on, something about you must have attracted it. There's more than one radio station in New York."

"I'll think about it."

But the truth was, Carl was in a funk; he was too exhausted to go out and sell himself. Narrow minds hid behind too many suits and ties, and their judgments had whittled away his stamina.

Not that the signature-gathering was helping.

\--

The next night, Tom asked Carl to the theatre.

"Are you in it?"

"Guilty as charged. Have you really been paying that little attention?"

"No, but I didn't remember you were on _this_ week. Say no more."

" _All the world's a stage,_ " murmured Picchu, from the darkness of her cage, where she should have been sleeping.

\--

They arrived on the subway, shivering in the dark. It hadn't gotten cold enough yet to afford real jackets.

The house was tiny, the reconverted corner of a warehouse, studded with fifty seats, filled with drapes that were once scraps from the fabric store and costumes that were once drapes. It smelled of tobacco and the faint whiff of other plant matter.

"You keep saying it's your last go. That you're going to concentrate on writing now."

"I do."

"And that there's no money in the theatre."

"There isn't." Tom grinned. He was perched in the seat next to Carl's, and he had his costume and makeup on.

Carl looked at him calculatingly and then grinned back. "I don't want you to quit either, you know. I'm just wondering why you keep saying it."

"It's fashionable to acknowledge the helplessness of one's position. Besides," Tom murmured, as if imparting a noble secret, "this, too, is a thing of the Art; I get the sense it serves Life perhaps more than I can judge. In faith, there is madness; in madness, faith..." He gave Carl a sideways smile and said, "I've got to go, now. Be on soon." Then he jumped to his feet and headed for the aperture leading backstage.

Carl didn't say 'good luck', which is bad luck among actors. He didn't feel like saying 'break a leg', either. After some time with the Speech, truth gets used to you, and a light joke is one thing but a serious moment another. He gave Tom the thumbs-up and watched as the back of his dark grey coat disappeared through the stage door.

He opened his program while he was waiting. It was a series of two connected modern short plays; Tom was in the second one. Who else was in here? Anna Schendl was at the top of the credits for the second play, along with Tom. Her name rang a faint bell; Carl couldn't think from where. There weren't any other actors in that one.

Then he turned his eyes to the print below the actors' names. And then he was shaking his head and feeling simultaneously proud and had. "Tom Swale, you self-righteous bastard."

Right under the director's name and the list of crew, Tom's name appeared again: he'd written the second play, the one he was going to be in. And he hadn't seen fit to warn Carl in advance.

This was going to be more interesting than usual.

The first play passed, a tale of a young woman who looked into the dark and found her dead relatives all ready to speak their secrets. Then the second performance began.

\--

Scene: Elore sitting in the dark. One spotlight on the stage: she's in a chair offset from it. Will enters stage right, into the spotlight. Elore stands up. She is tall and lanky, with an arrogant grace about her.

Will: We meet again. By chance or by design?

Elore: Hello, old friend.

Will: 'Friend', you call me. I don't know.  
I'd like to see that, in my life or after.

Elore: Fair. What brings you here?

Will: What always does?

 

 

Something about the encounter was familiar to Carl. Of course Tom would have written it from his own life experience, but this had the whole someone-just-walked-over-your-grave feeling about it.

 

 

Elore: Are you free?

Will: As long as death comes, none of us are free.

Elore: The clock is striking midnight.

Will: Wait, stay longer, listen.

Elore: Are you free?

Will: As long as death comes, none of us are free.  
As long as we await it--

Elore: Then the war is lost.  
And all is lost, and all battles-- are lost.

Will: No, not all battles. Each man is his own  
battlefield.

Elore: The clock is striking midnight.

Will: Wait, stay longer, listen--

Elore: For whose sake?

Will: For mine.

Elore: Yours? But all you say, I counter,  
and all your purposes I seed with ill,  
Your water foul, your soil salt, your air poison.  
\--Why care you for my presence?

 

 

 

Carl's heart pounded. He knew that wasn't in the script.

 

 

Will: And still  
I say, remain.

(Elore is silent, expressionless. She sits back down, but does not take the guitar across her lap.)

Elore: For your sake I will stay,  
As politic, a tribute to your whim,  
An exercise in base control--

 

Will: Not that.

Elore: Should I stay and play a tune, or mix drinks?  
As, after all, we're here to pass the time.

Will: Time's little enough without the passing.  
I came to challenge, not to see retreat.

 

 

There was a jolt in Carl's mind. He knew those voices, and he knew what they were saying. What's more, they seemed to be reciting something from the depths of his own mind.

If this was truly the One that Carl recognized, why was It so docile here? True, only an aspect, only the smallest of aspects, the inner voice, but-- This was not one of the old bindings, the old treaties, all of which required a desperate personal price. What _was_ this then, besides a play?

Then he remembered, from his own dabblings in the theatre, the fourth wall. How it more or less _exists_ \-- and how part of the actors' job is being cognizant of it, determining how solid that wall might be.

Of _course._ That's a restraint, a term of meeting, itself, if you give it life --

 

 

Elore: The clock is striking midnight once again.

Will: Wait, stay longer, listen.

Elore: For whose sake?

Will: For your own.  
I care to set you free.

Elore: You said just now  
that none of us are free.

Will: As long as death comes--

(Elore laughs uncomfortably, tosses her head and looks away from Will.)

Elore: None of _you_ are free.

Will: Dance with me.

Elore: What?

 

 

The woman on the stage -- no, not her, that which spoke through her -- looked genuinely startled, even vulnerable for a split second, her black eyes bright and face still.

 

 

Will: Come, dance with me.

 

 

She walked toward him -- toward Tom, though Tom was blazing with a strange light, a little transparent at the edges, and Carl had to remind himself that Tom was still in there -- and grabbed him, suddenly, taking the lead position in a tango. With brutal force she strutted him across the stage. He fell pliantly into her arms, kicked his leg up and moved with her again, then let her take over.

Bent backwards, her hands laced behind his back:

 

 

Will: Are you so free, then? What if you let go?

 

 

She looked at him, hanging there in her arms, looked at the position of her hands, and Carl could see the recognition on her face. She was not free either; if she let go, she'd lose her control.

The bells sounded.

 

 

Elore: The clock is striking midnight once again.

Will: It is. What happens if you don't let go?

Elore: Then we remain. As always we remain.  
It serves my ends. Beyond that, I don't care.

Will: How can you now say the war is lost?

Elore: I must go.

(She turns and lets go of him suddenly.)

Will: Wait, stay longer, listen.

Elore: For whose sake?

Will: For the dance. A moment past,  
you liked it well enough. What ails you now?

Elore: Why won't the clock go on? It isn't natural.  
I am tired of midnight and its advocates.

Will: Midnight is our truce. If I let it slip,  
you'd shed a slipper and be a pumpkin.

Elore: Would I not be as fair?

Will: You are always so fair. But rarely such  
a good dancer.

Elore: Oh, say what you mean.  
Dancing's nothing; you'd rather run away --

Will: No away is safe, for death still comes.

 

 

He wondered if Anna Schendl were in on it. He didn't see how she could not be.

 

 

Elore: You have me pinioned by your reason. Yet  
Death will come for you and yours as well;  
The weight of it remains upon your head.  
The weight of death, and of plain misfortune,  
For who among you does not fail? And that  
Is yours, not mine: your loss, your lack, your _fault!_  
And everything you do will have this fault,  
Inviting death. So why trouble to act?  
They will not love you for it, not ever,  
And all your strain will only lose you life.

Will: My strain is sacred, for it is of Life.  
It needs no calculation, no accounts,  
And so I give you none. I live for Life's sake.  
Midnight may pass, and give way to the dawn,  
And still my striving holds its own true worth,  
Remembered later, or forgotten,  
In contest or with ease.

Elore: Why fling yourself  
On rocks? The world will not notice, nor care.

Will: I say the world will change, and change again,  
Heedless to my life, or because of it.  
Life will change, and living it, I change it --  
Aware or unaware, willing or unwilling.

 

 

 

Carl felt something melt away in the back of his head, a restraint, some weighty bar that had been bruising his mind for months. He hadn't even known the heaviness of it until this moment, when the lack of it made him feel afloat.

 

 

Elore: Then I have no recourse. Your sport is done.

 

 

She turned to the audience then and stared through the fourth wall.

Carl's spine froze. He hadn't anticipated that. From the sweat shining on Tom's forehead under the stage lights, he guessed Tom hadn't, either. If the Lone One manifested fully--

 

 

Elore: Can I convince but one of you to speak  
On my behalf, to sound your voice with mine?

 

 

Her words were cajoling, were velvet. He knew those tones and despaired. _Please_ , he thought at the audience desperately, _please know it's not a game. Be superstitious theatre people. Come on._

Then it occurred to him that the fourth wall had him under its silent spell and he could break it at any moment. He leapt out of his seat.

"I, too," he said, "live my life with purpose. Anyone here going to argue me out of it?"

He gave the overly obvious wink to Tom, tried his hardest to look like an actor planted in the audience.

A couple of people chuckled nervously. Very nervously. They _were_ taking this seriously. Carl underestimated the average person sometimes. Underestimated their ability to see what was important. Their ability to see him, for that matter. He'd become so used to the perfect understanding he knew in the Speech that he'd forgotten other kinds of understanding were there, and just as powerful. No wonder his life felt lost in translation.

Then Tom spoke up -- Tom the actor, invoking the power of a keen aside. "She's had one too many," he said in a loud whisper. "Let's get her off the stage."

That did it; that kicked the aspect right out.

A transformation came over Anna at once, so quickly there wasn't the slightest hint left in her of anything different: she staggered for a moment and was pale, but grinned and bowed. Tom led her off the stage.

Carl knew his moment. He'd established himself as the audience plant, after all. He copied her movements and ran backstage.

\--

They crouched on an old sofa in the crowded shanty that was backstage of this tiny warehouse theatre, and the stage manager, Francis, poured some tea.

When he'd left again, Carl said, "Hi. I don't know if Tom's told you about me..."

"Of course Tom's told me about you; what would you think he'd do? I'm Anna. _Dai'stiho._ "

" _Dai._ "

Tom gulped greedily from his teacup. "What on earth are the reviews going to say?"

"Was there even a reviewer in the audience?" countered Anna.

"True. Most likely they'll see my other script, if they manage to make it before the final curtain. And they'll call it pretentious." He swallowed more tea. "It is, of course."

They sat in silence for a while. Carl watched moths take nibbles out of the set furniture.

"Tom," he said finally, "--and Anna, too, but Tom, you're clearly behind it -- I don't understand. You don't get something from nothing -- not anymore. There are no cheats, no workarounds. The Lone One's had that capacity turned off for millions of years. _Especially_ in its presence. Even the smallest of aspects. How did you _do_ this thing? How did you pull it off?"

"I reinforced the conceptual with the actual."

"Which means?"

Anna broke in. "It means he now owes a large debt to the Powers because he turned theatre reality woo-woo stuff into an actual shield. A very tough one."

"What _kind_ of debt?" Carl asked. His voice was sharp.

"One doesn't always learn these things right away," Tom said mildly. "But they tell me it's coming due in twenty years. And that's a good length of time in which to find out." Carl was about to speak again, but Tom stopped him. "I don't think it involves dying. One never knows, but... Call it a feeling. Now tell me. What's _your_ next plan?"

"I'm going to call up that radio station. And if they won't hear me out, I'm going to call up another. And another." He drank a sip of tea. He felt nervous, but wonderfully light. "I won't stop until they think I'm a fool, or they hire me. And if they think I'm a fool, I'll hire myself out as a professional fool." He smirked at Tom. He felt sheepish about being had, but... everyone was had now and again, by that One.

Tom's answering grin was all the encouragement he needed.

 


End file.
